About a week ago domain name Sochi.ru – which hosted popular city portal with forums, classifieds, events calendar, news, etc. – was transferred to Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014”.

Why and how this happened is a bit of a mystery. Originally, on August 19, an announcement was posted on the website that the popular portal will move to a new domain – Sochi.com, and included statement that “by the order of the Government of the Russian Federation administration of domain name Sochi.ru goes over to the Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″”… but later that sentence was removed from the announcement.

Neither Organizing Committee nor previous owner commented this to the media. Most news agencies quoted head of PR of the Ru-Center, .RU’s official domain names registration center, mentioning the “Olympic Law”, which basically makes anything with Sochi Olympics logo and other Olympics-related symbols (and that includes domain names) property of the Organizing Committee. However, not only that makes no sense, since Sochi.com is not much different from Sochi.ru in this respect, but also only combinations of “Sochi” and “2014” fall under that law — this was discussed and explained at the time when this law came into effect.

But this is a done deal – WHOIS info already shows “Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″” as Sochi.ru’s registrant, and the copy of the original portal already spinning at the Sochi.com. According to the original announcement, anyone who has @sochi.ru email address and all third level domains will exist until the end of this year.

This is sort of vulgar entertainment story, if you want to skip it it’s just fine :)

While Bush’s visit to Sochi was pretty boring (Sochi’s all about pleasure, not business, you should know it by now :)), Life.ru brings us a wonderful story – with video – from the roof of Sochi’s airport. Literally.

American presidential security boys have arrived a day early and settled in around Sochi’s airport to ensure safe landing of their president. When the time came, while Air Force One was on its way down, one US sniper, located on the airport’s roof, “took it out” and emptied his bladder. Here’s a photo, and you can watch the video on this life.ru page.

Air Force One has landed today in Adler airport, marking the beginning US President’s first visit to Sochi on his two days work trip. It will most likely be the last time George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will meet as presidents, as Putin’s second presidential term will end in May.

There was no official word on what will be discussed during the meeting, but there sure are a lot of issues to be discussed between the US and Russia. Like Kosovo, anti-missile defense (many believe this one will be the main topic), NATO expansion, the Russian-U.S. relations and many other. «The Times» reports that Putin will officially propose the tunnel between Alaska and Russia’s Far East. And Russian media reports about possibility of signing a “strategic framework” document — sort of “road map” of the Russia-US relations, the guide for Next Russian and US Presidents (the next Russian President will take office in May and the presidential elections in the USA will take place in the end of this year).

The US delegation has 700 people, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and US Ambassador to Russia William Burns. Russian delegation will include all their counterparts, and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev.

The first day is over now and there was no official “business” talks, it was all about pleasure: Putin gave tour to George and Laura Bush of future Olympic areas, presented scale models of Olympic projects, sea shore walk and sunset watch (how romantic *rolling eyes*), fancy dinner with a concert in presidential residence “Bocharov Ruchei”.

As you may know, past Sunday was elections day to State Duma – lower house of Russia’s parliament. If you knew that you most likely to know that the United Russia party, headed by current President Vladimir Putin, won big in every region (including foreign voting location), however the results weren’t quite the same everywhere. For example it’s reported that in Chechnya 99+% voted for United Russia, while in St. Petersburg, Putin’s home city, “only” 50+%. Other parties’ support wasn’t even all around either. But Sochi residents as a whole, it seems, represent average Russia’s opinions — take a look at the results*: Read the rest of this entry »